Question:
The keywords ideal for my real estate site seems to be highly
competitive and difficult to rank with. What options do I have?
Ethan Kisner
Answer:
Hi Ethan,
Most popular businesses face the problem of having to deal with
extremely competitive keywords.
Your website being in the Real Estate space faces enormous
competition from the millions of web pages on the subject of Real
Estate.
The focus of website optimization for such extremely popular and
competitive industries has often been misplaced in the search
engine industry. The focus should be on optimizing your website
based on your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). If you analyze
your service and identify what is it that you offer that is
different from your competitors, it is likely that you will be
able to isolate your USP. Your site optimization needs to focus
on serving specific real estate needs of your customers that
differentiates your service from the rest. Try and leverage such
focus by selecting keyword phrases that target your specific
audience and are popular. Such phrases are likely to have far
less competition than the generic keywords that everyone else
targets
For Example, if you offer residential real estate property
services in the city of Chicago, then target keywords relating to
Residential Property in Chicago. Such Keywords would be much
easier to get high rankings with and they would also be in tune
with what your potential customers are using as their search
terms in the search engines. The results would not just get you
high rankings, but higher sales conversions.
The best approach to keyword selection is to select keywords with
high efficiency i.e. selecting keywords that are popular yet less
competitive. I have developed a formula for determining the
Keyword 'Ranking' Efficiency called the 'Keyword Effectiveness
Index' (KEI). You can use the guideline of my KEI formula listed
here:
http://www.1stSearchRanking.net/keywords.htm
The article also offers further techniques on keyword selection.
Sometimes you will find attractive keyword phrases, which can
bring you visitors looking for 'related' services you may not
offer. Users looking for such information could be perfect for
cross-selling the services of your site. Including such high- potential keyword phrases in your SEO campaign can be rewarding.
If you do not have existing content on your website to optimize
with such keyword phrases, then it is a good idea to write some
fresh content for these keywords. For example, let's say that
your research shows that a particular keyword "Mortgage Company
Chicago" is very popular but not too competitive. You can write
an article listing prominent companies in Chicago offering home
mortgage services. You would also promote the other pages in your
real estate site on this page. If this page gets good rankings,
you'll be able to get a lot of visitors that may be interested in
the related service that you are offering.
You could take this a step further and even work out some sort of
an affiliate deal with the services that you have mentioned in
your page. So, the visitors would either browse through the rest
of your site and hopefully purchase what you are selling, or,
would go to a mortgage service that you have reviewed in your
article and purchase their services, earning you an affiliate
commission.
March 22, 2004
Sumantra Roy, president of 1st Search Engine Ranking.net, is one of the most respected and recognized search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. Sumantra's articles on search engine optimization have been widely published and quoted in different web sites and newsletters on the Internet. His unique formula for establishing the most appropriate keywords for a site has been used by WordTracker, the most popular keyword research tool on the Internet. This formula is also used by many other search engine optimization companies for establishing the most appropriate keywords for their clients' sites.
FreeFind Site Search Engine - FreeFind adds a "search this site" feature to your website, making your site easier to use. FreeFind also gives you reports showing what your visitors are searching for, enabling you to improve your site. FreeFind's advanced site search engine and automatic site map technology can be added to your website for free.
Buy UPC Codes
Get your products listed online!